Fissure Read Online Free

naked and searching for my next layover. It was dangerous to teleport from your point of origin before you’d pinpointed your destination point, I knew that, but what I’d left behind in the bathroom was far more dangerous than the possibility of ending up in limbo.
    And then, I was en route. It was the first place that popped to mind and the last place I wanted to go. The only place I needed to avoid from now until the end of time.
         The cursed place I found myself in half a second later. My brother and newest sister-in-law’s bedroom. They weren’t here. In fact, they hadn’t spent a single night in it since they’d been United—William’s station as a doctor had kept the both of them more busy than a couple newlyweds should be, but the symbol of that room, the significance of their bed looming in front of me, was enough to cause my insides to twist into knots.
         Their faces were everywhere, smiling back at me from the plates of glass holding them in their frames. God, they were the happiest couple I’d seen, and I’d swear on my life I was happy for them. Genuinely happy, not the fakey, phony kind; it was just me I wasn’t happy for. Their happy ending meant my unhappy one.
         The dress Bryn had worn on their Unity day was spread over the bed. It gave me shivers just seeing it again, remembering her in it. The way she’d looked as she’d sprinted down the beach, her face exuberant. She couldn’t get to us fast enough—she couldn’t get to William fast enough.
         “Since you wound up with the girl we both fell for, big brother,”—I was now speaking to a picture frame. Loony, kooky, hook me up to a Prozac drip now nutty—“I think the least you can offer me is a pair of pants,” I said as I wandered butt naked into their closet, imagining blinders on when I walked by Bryn’s modest collection of jeans and cotton tees. The girl was under the assumption couture was a curse word.
         I pulled the first pair of pants I found on William’s side of the closet, cringing when I discovered they weren’t designer and were well worn in. The way the man dressed, you’d think he didn’t have a mutual fund that could take a dump on a small country’s annual GDP.
         “I didn’t know Levi’s was still in business,” I mumbled as I snaked my legs into them. “Although judging from the looks of these jeans, they could have gone out of business decades ago.”
         “Son?” a baritone voice that carried a tone of concern called out from the bedroom.
         Super, the Chancellor of our Council, also known as my father, had just witnessed me carrying on multiple conversations with myself. What’s that sour tang in the air? Ah, that’s it, demotion. If having been forced to take an indefinite vacation from my responsibilities as a strength instructor after the first and last student I’d worked with after William and Bryn’s Unity dropped me on their first day—dropped me five times—wasn’t bad enough, the man who called all the shots in our Alliance had just been privy to my decreasing mental stamina.
         “Hey, Father,” I called out, pulling a thermal tee off its hanger and sliding it over my head. It was a tad large, my brother was large enough you’d think he grew up by a nuclear reactor, but it would work. “I’ll be out in a sec.”
         “No rush,” he said, his voice purposefully calm. Yep, my father was so concerned by my fragile state he was making sure to keep his tone controlled. Take candy from the babies, shave all the puppies bald, but whatever you do, for the love of god, don’t upset the poor, mentally deranged Patrick Hayward.
         I slid into a pair of William’s sandals and made a conscious effort of holding my shoulders high, my head following suit. “Almost there,” I said, fastening the last fly on the hideous pair of 501’s.
         He smiled at me as I exited the closet, but his eyes pulsed with